


A form, a means, an echo

by moondoor_majesty



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 02:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21510277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moondoor_majesty/pseuds/moondoor_majesty
Summary: Basically, Liv is not in the best of sorts and the TARDIS, for reasons utterly unknown and altogether timey-whimey, looks like she did in that episode where she was played by Suranne Jones.  Set sometime in-between Dark Eyes and Doom Coalition.
Relationships: Liv Chenka/The Doctor's TARDIS
Comments: 5
Kudos: 4





	A form, a means, an echo

**Author's Note:**

> If you're wondering, "does this exists due to a mixture of having been watching a lot of Gentleman Jack at the time, remembering that she also played the TARDIS once, and also because her and Nicola Walker had been in a few episodes of Scott & Bailey together?" The answer is very much "yes."

There are two things Liv isn’t entirely sure about, right now. One, why she’s currently sitting on the linoleum floor of a featureless, white-walled corridor, with an eerie stillness hanging in the air. And two, why there’s a dark-haired woman in a shabby-yet-fancy grey top with bows and a large flowing, poufing brown skirt staring deeply into her eyes – one hand touching at the side of Liv’s face, the other stroking a fall of hair out of the way.

There’s something familiar about the woman, in a way Liv can’t quite place. She’s never _seen_ her before, that she can recall. Although, Liv’s met a lot of people, in her life so far. So many fleeting encounters, on so many worlds and times, that it’s at least dimly possible. 

But it’s more of a feeling, than what she looks like. A comfort, a trust, like they’ve known each other for a while, and yet... they haven’t, have they?

“Who are you?” Liv finds herself asking, first away. Despite ‘why are we here?’ and ‘where is _here_?’ and ‘wasn’t I just _doing_ something, a minute ago, and why can’t I remember what it was?’ also being pressing questions.

“A form. A means. An echo,” the woman says, as if any of that’s a real explanation.

“I was more looking for a _name_ ,” Liv tells her. “Do I know you? I just get the feeling I know you, from somewhere...”

The woman smiles, regarding Liv with a certain cheeky, captivating look. “You’ve been inside me.”

“I think I’d remember that.” The woman is striking, though – beautiful, and Liv can’t help but have a few thoughts about _wanting_ to. But, it’s hard to think about anything, for too long. Hard to focus. Like the energy’s being sapped right from her, and she finds herself sagging into the woman, who gently guides her back upright.

“You’re losing,” she tells Liv, simply, but seriously. And there’s worry in those dark brown eyes. “Your body’s shutting down. But there are so many worlds I still want to show you. Through so many times. You need to fight.”

“How?” She knows it’s a thing you say to people, when they’re on the brink of death – but, hearing it from the other side...

It’d be useful if she knew what she was dying _from_. Liv tries to think, to remember. There’d been a flash of light. Then pain, and falling.

So, someone shot her. Nothing new. Though, the weapon had been on a higher, more lethal setting than usual.

But, that means she’s not actually injured. She’s not bleeding out, or poisoned, or half a dozen other things that might be more difficult to simply _will_ yourself out of. If that’s what the TARDIS thinks she can do. And yes, Liv knows now that's who she is. Looking all human, for some reason that Liv doesn't think there's enough time to properly get into. 

“Can you feel what’s happening to you?” The woman slides her hand over Liv’s chest, resting between her ribs. Liv slips her own in beneath, and notices, for the first time, that she hasn’t breathed once, this entire conversation. Because it isn’t a real conversation, of course, and the rules are different. Her heart beat is slow, faint, just short of arresting completely.

“Help me,” Liv bids, genuinely scared. She could save someone _else_ , if it were them. She knows exactly what to do, and more. But like this, trapped inside her own head....

But she has to, somehow. She’s fought too hard for her life, for too long, to just be shot down in some random corridor.

“I _am_.” And Liv feels the woman’s lips pressing against her forehead, as she holds her close. Then, kissing between her eyes, and down the bridge of her nose. Intimate, for a ship, but Liv really doesn’t mind. “I’m telling you what you need to know. You’re the clever medical one.”

“And you’re an entire time ship! Can’t you just tell the Doctor where I am? Or tell someone? Someone with even the most basic knowledge of CPR...”

“Don’t panic,” the TARDIS tells her. “ _You_ don’t panic. You think.”

“Sometimes I panic?”

There are a lot of decisions Liv’s made in her life that she can’t say came from anything but the most base of instincts. More emotion, than actual logic or planning – even if they all lead her to where she should be, in the end. Which, apparently, consisted of dying in a very boring hallway, right _now_ , instead of dying of radiation poisoning, some unknown months ago... as Liv figures probably would have happened by now, had she not been cured of it. And _why_ is this always the case? Things she can't possibly begin to think her way out of, no matter her skills and education?

As if in some effort to pull her focus back, the woman’s mouth touches against her own, lightly, and Liv’s heart quickens just a bit. 

Okay. Now she knows something else. Beyond ‘no wonder the Doctor sometimes _strokes_ her.’ No – what it is, is that her heart isn’t the problem. The way that particular kind of weapon works, it paralyses you. Starting at her lungs, then shutting everything else down in turn.

She needs to breathe. Just one breath, and that _should_ be enough to wake up.

Her forehead rests against the woman’s – the TARDIS’s – whichever – and she closes her eyes. Putting everything she has into drawing that one breath.

When she opens them again, it’s in a jolting gasp. And she’s alone. In the same stark corridor, but alone. Lying on the cold floor, which she quickly fixes, pushing herself up fully, her heart racing and lungs drawing an over-compensating amount of oxygen back into her body.

It’s louder back in reality, too. She can hear a stampede of footsteps and weapons fire elsewhere in the building. Hundreds of sworn enemies shouting, fighting, and falling. Because of course he’d landed them in the middle of some kind of local civil war.

She finds him, a few turns of corridor over. Catching him in the middle of racing towards, well, _her_ , she thinks.

“Liv! There you are. And you’re alright.” Relief rises in his face, as he regards her, hands resting at her shoulders.

“Of course I am,” she says, although she hadn’t been so sure herself, a minute ago.

“One of the Fifth said they saw you get shot. The blaster must not have been at full battery. You’re getting a bit lucky, with that.”

“Right. Lucky.” That would be one explanation for it. That the whole thing with the TARDIS had just been some weird dream, something her own subconscious made up herself, and she was always going to wake up out of it. The more she tries to think about it, the more the experience slips away. Until its just a scatter of vague images and feelings. But the woman’s face sticks in her mind, and she thinks it might have been a bit real, too. “When you talk to the TARDIS, does she ever look like anything? A pretty woman with a pile of dark hair, and a fancy outfit?”

“Nothing quite like that,” he replies, as they continue moving towards the chaos above. “Is that what you saw?”

“I don’t know what I saw. It was probably just a dream.”

“Dreams can be as real as anything,” he says, considering, and they do have some shared experience in that department. “It does stand to reason she could have found a way to communicate, that a human would find familiar. She is rather fond of you. We both are.”

“You have a funny way of showing it. Always giving me brand-new ways to have a near-death experience.”

“Come on, you enjoy it,” he tries to get her to admit. “The bits in-between, at least?”

“All two of them, in the last year?” She can't remember the last time the last time they'd stepped out of the TARDIS and gone more than about half an hour without someone, somehow, deciding to make a creative attempt on at least one of their lives. 

Still, he's not wrong - she does enjoy all of this. And she wants it to last a long time – travelling with him, in the TARDIS – despite the endless identical corridors and accidental landings in war zones. 

She casts her thoughts towards the ship, who’s probably been in her head all day, translating things. _Thanks. If that was you._

She doesn’t get a reply in words, so much as a feeling. A sensation. Something like a warm nudge, in response.

So, it was her.


End file.
